The Girlfriend Experienceis a divisive Steven Soderbergh film, as his more experimental films tend to be. Written by David Levien and Brian Koppelman (Solitary Man, Rounders), The Girlfriend Experience has a fractured but sturdy narrative, showing its prostitute going from gig to gig, all building towards its gut punch ending. The episodic nature of the job is kind of tailor-made for a television show, which is probably why Starz, executive producer Soderbergh, and the creators have made 13 episodes based on the movie.

Just last week, we learned that there was a femaleOcean’s Eleven in development with Sandra Bullocktaking the lead role akin to George Clooney‘s Danny Ocean. There are even rumblings that the story might actually take place in the same universe as the original heist trilogy from Steven Soderbergh, with Clooney potentially making a cameo as Ocean. But the big question is, who will surround Bullock as the rest of the heist crew?

We decided to put together a prospective cast who would be perfect to team up with Sandra Bullock for some kind of heist. Obviously the characters won’t be exactly the same as they are in Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven, but since we’re just having fun assembling a dream cast, we’ve stuck to the characters pretty closely to put this list together for the female Ocean’s Eleven cast. Read More »

This weekend sees the premiere of Our Brand Is Crisis, starring Sandra Bullock in a role originally written with George Clooney in mind. Now she’s going one step further, and looking to take over a franchise that actually used to be his.

According to a new report, Bullock will lead an all-female Ocean’s Eleven film, with Gary Ross (The Hunger Games) directing. Clooney, for his part, doesn’t seem to mind — he’s helping produce it. Read about the female Oceans Eleven movie after the jump. Read More »

Director Sam Mendes is guest-editing next month’s issue of Empire and he really delivered the goods. He could have easily just coasted on this gig and used his temporary position to just remind people that Spectre is coming out on November 6th, but instead, he rounded up a bunch of Hollywood’s biggest and most respected directors and asked them simple questions about their filmmaking process. The answers are fascinating.

To check out some highlights from the Sam Mendes interviews, hit the jump.

It’s only been two years since Steven Soderbergh left behind filmmaking. Ever since “retiring,” though, Soderbergh has found a more than welcoming home in television. The last movie we saw from him was for TV, HBO’s Behind the Candelabra, and he’s about to debut the second season of his show The Knick. The news of an early Soderbergh retirement was saddening, to say the least, but understandable. Read his current thoughts on retirement and TV after the jump.

Here’s another new show to add to your fall TV to-do list. Amazon Studios has just debuted the first trailer for Red Oaks, a 1980s comedy executive produced by Steven Soderbergh and David Gordon Green. Craig Roberts plays David, a college student uncertain about his future. He picks up a summer job at a country club, where he meets all sorts of characters who teach him about life and about himself.

If that sounds like it’s got a strong Adventureland vibe to it, the Red Oaks trailer isn’t exactly going to dissuade you of that notion. Watch it after the jump. Read More »

I can’t wait for the October return of Steven Soderbergh‘s The Knick, which will be going into its second season. Once again, Soderbergh directs and shoots every episode of the series, and probably does much of the editing as well. This new look at the second season is even more appealing than the last because it teases far more stuff, and far weirder stuff — for instance, what’s up with that fireball blowing up in some surgeon’s face towards the end of this latest The Knick trailer? Read More »

Here’s a gorgeous teaser for The Knick season two, which comes complete with an announcement that Steven Soderbergh‘s excellent series returns to Cinemax on October 16. Clive Owen and most of the rest of the S1 cast returns, but this time at least part of the story goes to San Francisco along with Cornelia Robertson (Juliet Rylance). We still don’t know much about the thrust of this season, though we can expect it to deal with heroin, further competition over medical advances, and gangsters and loan sharking, for starters.

Not that you’ll see too much of all that in The Knick S2 teaser below, which is mostly lovely atmospheric shots, albeit ones that have a quiet beauty and sometimes even a grand sense of oppressiveness to them. Read More »

Think you’ve got no time to read, watch, and think about stuff on a contestant basis? Steven Soderbergh is here to show you up. While doing post-production on the ten-episode first season of The Knick, and shooting and editing Magic Mike XXL, and prepping a second season of The Knick, and working as exec producer on The Girlfriend Experience TV show and Citizenfour, and probably doing quite a few other things, Soderbergh still managed to take in a steady diet of other films, TV shows and books. (He also got to see Gone Girl in March.) We know this because he posted a diary of his year in media for 2014, and you can read the full thing below. Read More »

This week a couple of good profiles have been published on Christopher Nolan in advance of his film Interstellar hitting theaters next week. The two main articles come from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and I recommend checking out both pieces. Together, the profiles feature a great deal of interesting information on the filmmaker and his latest film which I thought might be of interest. I have collected 15 of most interesting tidbits for you after the jump.